How Many Skills Do You Have in Your Toolbox?

“If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” – Abraham Maslow

How can you and I possibly use this leadership quote?

Do you have good knowledge and skills in the broad range of tools which are suitable for your chosen profession?

I suggest you need to carry out an audit and see if you have any gaps. You almost certainly will have some. Write a plan to bridge them and work through that plan in a systematic way over the next months and years.

I’m not suggesting that you need to be an expert in every area; in fact, quite the opposite. You need to know enough about the subject so that you can decide who has the knowledge, who is skilled and has the high level of expertise that you will need to support you in all the technical and business disciplines.

Without a reasonable knowledge in a broad range of skills in your chosen area, how would you know how to pick the really good people? Surround yourself with people who are better than you in each individual area. They don’t have to be full-time employees. Freelancers are fine. For example, a couple of hours a month from a top Finance Director will bring you huge value in a highly technical discipline. You will gain far more than the cost, with ideas and new angles as well as potential savings.

In your learning plans, please consider the changes we are all facing and those we will continue to face. Peter Drucker, who also authored plenty of excellent and famous leadership quotes, was the management writer who introduced and defined management as a profession in its own right. He wrote extensively on the subject of “knowledge workers” and said that nearly everyone in the future will have a succession of different jobs during their lifetime. They will have more than one “career” and often more than one job at the same time. Individuals will have to treat themselves as a “corporation” and run their careers as if they are a business of which they are the “CEO”. This is in such contrast to the “job for life” mentality and expectation of the second half of the 20th century.

I look back over the last 50 years and recognise the changes that have taken place and the increasing demands on our knowledge and intellect. For me, it is a paradise of new things and new opportunities. I really hope that you share my delight.

I implore you to continue your search for knowledge – but then you are already convinced because you are reading these articles every week and you want inspiration to move you to acquire new knowledge and skills.

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About the Author

Graham Speechley
The Inspirational Leadership Mentor

Born and bred in central England, Graham graduated from Loughborough University in 1979 with a Bachelor's degree in Engineering & Management and is professionally qualified as a Chartered Engineer. He now concentrates on his life-long passion of helping others discover ways to improve what they do, work out what they want out of their lives and careers and then making sure they achieve it. Graham's passion for inspiring leaders and managers comes over through his weekly blogs at www.leadershipquote.org.

Comments

The notion of each individual “being a CEO” is very powerful and compelling! I think it is very liberating to think in those terms, especially when it comes seeking new opportunities. I recall leafing through the book “Three billion new capitalists” by Clyde Prestowitz, which highlights the way new entrepreneurs are on the rise, notably in India and China. The account is also a strong awakening for the sense it conveys about the economic conditions that have evolved since we have entered the new millennium. Clearly, state protection constituted by tariffs and industrial support can no longer respond to the severe competition governing the new economic reality. This is not a reason to despair, but rather a call to continuously strive to “reinvent” oneself profession-wise…